Anywhere
by Sage Pagan
Summary: Here it is. Our story. You knew I'd be writing it alone. COMPLETE.
1. The Right Questions

_"But what did I know? What does anyone know about anyone...? You see their lives, hear them, only in fragments...The pieces of their lives enter your consciousness, become as much a part of you as your own life. But in the end, you can only imagine what's in their souls, even if it is unimaginable."_ - Gayle Golden

_Dear my love, haven't you wanted to be with me  
And dear my love, haven't you longed to be free  
I can't keep pretending that I don't even know you  
And at sweet night, you are my own_

- "Anywhere" by Evanescence

* * *

**1: The Right Questions**

"Do you remember that song I sang to you a long time ago?"

They'd been on the phone that night two years ago, and he had asked if he could sing to her. He'd been pretty horrible at it, but she'd kept her laughter at bay until he'd finished. She hesitated at first when he told her it was her turn. She only ever sang in the shower after all, where the white tiled walls made her voice echo like a rock star's. Privacy guaranteed confidence. But there he was breathing on the other line waiting patiently for her voice. Swallowing her anxiety, she was relieved that he couldn't see her squirming as she sang only the first verse. Afterward, she waited for his laughter. None came. There was only a quiet awe, which made her even more embarrassed.

She'd sung one of her favorite Evanescence songs. But now the song could no longer be casually listened to. Now, it took courage to even read its name. It took courage to get past that first verse, to listen to Amy Lee's haunting voice manipulate the notes into something that made her heart ache every single time she heard it. Because every single time, she thought of that night and of him.

It's rarely the lyrics that moved you; it was the memories the song stirred. Astounding how a mere song could instantly take you back to a moment in time, to a feeling, whether you welcomed it or not.

"Of course I remember that song," he snapped. "How could I forget it? I don't know why you're saying this to me. Why you're being so damn cold."

"How can I not be cold when I never know what's going on inside your head? I have to guess, to make assumptions, and only when I make the wrong ones do you ever fucking talk!" she exploded.

Unable to respond, he could only avert his eyes from hers, because he knew it was true. They both knew that he talked all the time. He just never _said_ anything about himself, and those facts, those small and dangerous conversations, were the ones that mattered the most.

"Why don't you argue with me? I want us to argue. Be angry with me! _Tell me what's going on__!_"

He gave her a small, sad smile. "I lack the ability to get mad at you, Julia. I can only get…irritated."

At that moment, she began to realize that the only thing they'd ever had in common was their love for one another. How that ever happened still baffled her to this day.

"You're unbelievable," she sighed.

It was a retreat, a temporary surrender. She'd lost again, and he remained an enigma. But, she wasn't one to give up, especially on the ones she loved. It just required a different strategy. It would require patience.

It was one of the first pushes, but certainly not the last.

* * *

"Chang, you still want that story about the Italian 'waste spill?'"

"I do. I thought we established that this morning at the meeting, unless Saoru wants someone else."

Gregorio leaned over his cubicle and handed Julia a stack of papers with plane tickets stapled to the corner.

"You'll be landing in Milan. The Mishimas are doing some crazy shit over there, I tell you," the editor smirked, clicking away at his computer keyboard. "You know we're not sending you over there for a tiny story about the environment, though I know you wouldn't mind that either."

"Nah I wouldn't, but thanks," Julia replied, casually flipping through photos and police reports. Jin Kazama scowled from behind sunglasses as he entered a dark van. Men in white lab coats transported huge crates of who-knew-what into Mishima headquarters. Same old, same old.

"You'll be under the guise of a tournament participant," Gregorio reminded her, uploading an ancient photograph of Julia on his computer screen. It depicted a twenty-one-year-old Navajo-Chinese fighter in full-blown combat regalia during the sixth Iron Fist tournament: jeans mini skirt, cowboy boots, turquoise, eagle feathers and the fiercest look she'd been able to muster. Julia's eyes widened, a warm blush creeping over her cheeks. Her editor stared up at her, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

"You know, tampering with photos is unethical," she said coolly, clearing her throat, and Gregorio guffawed, unable to keep up the charade.

"I dunno where the hell you got that, but I got my eye on you, Greg," Julia said with a grin. "Lucky for you, I don't have to play up the part much."

"Yep, you're the real deal. It's only been what, three years since that photo?" Gregorio asked, navigating away from the picture, to Julia's relief.

"Five."

Her editor paused, brow furrowed. "Can I ask you somethin'?"

"Is this off the record?" Julia teased.

Gregorio grinned. "Always."

"Then shoot."

The news editor gathered his thoughts, searching the Native woman's face. He felt like a father to her and had been amazed with her talent the day she'd been hired three years ago.

"You told me once that you studied archaeology in college. So why did you become a reporter?"

The woman paused; experience told Gregorio that she was thinking deeply about the question. Being patient was best if he wanted an honest answer.

"I wanted to help people," she finally replied. "And I liked knowing the truth. I liked finding it."

"And when you don't find it?"

Julia smiled briefly. "I will. I just have to ask the right questions."

* * *

"Not every question has an answer, but every answer has a question. You just have to figure out which ones to ask."

This was what her News Writing professor told her after Julia had expressed concerns about interviewees reluctant to share information. These words tormented her as she'd studied him up close; from a distance; when he was looking; when he wasn't looking. When he lied, when he was sweet. When he retreated into that dark heart of his and brooded. When he took her into his arms and held with a quiet ache. When he thought everything was all right between them.

She knew she wasn't asking the right questions.

When she realized that she knew nothing about him, she understood that she couldn't trust him. Every time she tried to see inside him, he used silence or perfectly concocted stories to stop the questions.

But he didn't know her either. She was just as good as he was at holding back. He didn't know that she would have accepted him regardless of whatever secrets he kept – as long as his answers were honest the first time she asked her questions. He didn't know that she was like water; she was even more enigmatic, as she took all of its shapes, learned to master all of its forms. She could be liquid, as she was now, adaptable, ebbing and flowing with whatever change and conflict met her along the way. She was like ice, a hard, emotionless, impenetrable fortress that solidified as it wished when times became cold.

And she was vapor, able to simply vanish without a trace when things became unbearable. She'd pulled such disappearing acts on him before, and he'd been devastated in those brief periods without her. But, eventually, she would become water again, his again, flowing in and around his fire, the river that kept the impulsive flames of vice and devastation at bay.

Now, when she thought about it, she found it ironic that she worked in an industry of truth, yet had allowed herself to live in lies for two and a half years.

It was true that she wanted to help people, to give a voice to the voiceless. The truth was indeed liberating.

But, she also never, ever wanted to be so badly duped again.

* * *

The flight to Milan would take ten hours. Julia fidgeted in her seat, flipping absentmindedly through magazines and through notes she'd taken the night previous about the Mishima case, wondering what Italy held in store for her.

Her cameraman, a new hire from Oxford University, wouldn't stop talking. The man insisted on sharing every detail he knew about the Mishimas and about Italy. He was lucky she was patient and found his enthusiasm endearing. Still, the rugged-and-masculine-yet-cultured-art-snob didn't suit him. Steve Fox was just an intelligent jock, an oxymoron in itself; Julia smiled to herself. That was all right. She enjoyed contradictions, as she was one herself.

"How come I never saw you at the tournaments? We competed in a lot of them together, and I never once saw you," Steve asked, his blue eyes shining.

"I dunno. Strange, huh?" she replied, staring out the plane window. Maybe he'd take a hint; he didn't.

Finally, three hours later he was drooling in slumber, the blond head drooping so that his chin touched his chest. Julia reclined his seat to save him from a sore neck.

"Can I get you something to drink, Miss?"

She looked up.

Five years gone and he still hadn't changed his hair color.

* * *

It shouldn't have hurt.

She should have been happy that, after all of his misery, he was back on his feet. He'd landed a job at a travel agency.

Despite his deceit and his heartache-long silences, despite her former naïveté and the salt-in-the-wound memories, she should have been happy.

Did he love her? She shouldn't want to know. How old was this woman? Was she beautiful? Smart? Could she carry on a good conversation? What did she sound like when she spoke, when she laughed? Would she listen to him and comfort him when he came to her, destroyed and grief-stricken?

Or was he merely doing the right thing after that one night stand breathed life into a consequence made of his eyes, feet, hair and hands?

She knew she should stop tormenting herself with questions that were irrelevant to the story. It wasn't newsworthy. What mattered was that it was never meant to be, that their lives had been on different paths, in different _worlds_, since the beginning. She should stop wondering about what could have been and just focus on the truth, "inverted pyramid" style: the most important facts always come first. The fact that they never talked anymore. The fact that they were miles apart. The fact that he was a liar. The fact that she'd tormented him with enough scathing words to obliterate his already obsolete self-esteem. The fact that she'd once believed in him.

But, sometimes she remembered his tenderness instead, or the easy way he accepted her exactly as she was. These were important too, weren't they?

A reporter's job was to seek the truth. And with him, she did find the truth. It took months. It took several heartbreaks, vicious conversations and late long distance calls. It took for her to become colder and viler than required. But she got it.

_You gotta be pushy_, her editors and professors said. If you don't push, you'll never know the truth. It's amazing what some people would say or do to keep the truth from you.

And so she pushed; he pushed back with silence. But she knew that he would eventually surrender, and it hurt her to know the kind of control she could wield over him if she possessed enough tenacity – or rage. She also knew that, this time, he had not merely surrendered; he had broken.

She prided herself on her detached compassion, on her objectivity, on her at once practical, logical mannerisms and her flighty but genuine ability to love and care deeply without getting too obsessed. She wondered if she suffered from a mild case of attention deficit disorder when it came to relationships. It made her feel heartless.

But with _him_ it was different. With him, she lost track of herself. And she was a goddamn _journalist _now. Blunders were excusable when she was seventeen, but now, belly deep in her first career as a reporter, she was supposed to have her shit straight. She was supposed to be rooted to reality. To logic. To _facts. _

But, now and again, she found herself drifting back to memories she'd thought she'd swept away. Maybe she should have pursued a career in acting. Life seemed like one big stage sometimes, and maybe it was. Maybe everybody was just masquerading in the dark.

_He's getting married. He has a daughter. He's traveling the world._

_Without you._

Those were facts.

It shouldn't have hurt.

Then she'd imagine that she was in his future wife's shoes, or in his two-year-old daughter's shoes – little pink Nike sneakers that curled around her toes too tight. She imagined how their lives would be.

Getting married so soon? Does this not only reinforce the fact that the man you loved is an emotional and psychological nut job who was never dealt a normal hand in life's cruel card game? You _know _he's a liar. Could you _really_ have been happy had he chosen you, waited for you, knowing about all the problems he has? And would _you_ have chosen _him_ if you had known his circumstances--his truth--_before_ you had known his heart?

She'd rather imagine that that little girl was hers and his. He always liked to talk about having children one day. Well, one day was today. She just wasn't the mother.

Maybe she did like some pain after all. It was always inspiring.

Things are always more romantic, more beautiful, when they don't exist. When you let your mind run wild with it. Because, in you heart, you know that you can't have it ever at all.


	2. Patterns

_All I gotta say is that I must be dreaming, can't be real  
You're not here with me, still I can feel you near to me  
I caress you, let you taste us, just so blissful, listen  
I would give you anything baby, just make my dreams come true  
Oh baby you give me butterflies_

- "Butterflies" by Michael Jackson

* * *

**2: Patterns**

They'd been fighting again about his lack of communication, yet another one-sided argument in which she did all the yelling and flaw pinpointing. He once mistook it as she trying to change him, which only made her angrier, because nothing was further from the truth. She just wanted to hear what was going on inside his head and heart from time to time. Apparently this was too much to ask. Such quarrels were usually followed with her retreating into an icy brood, which he didn't dare attempt to melt with straightforward conversation. Rather, he resorted to sending her songs via e-mail.

This time it was Michael Jackson's "Butterflies," and the song's tenderness took her by surprise. But, rather than forgive and run back to him for more, she became angry at the utter cheesiness of such a gesture, at how easily the music moved her.

But, most of all, she was angry because of how much she needed him in her life.

After she listened to the song, she began to see butterflies everywhere.

While sitting on the front porch, she watched the monarchs perform their clumsy and erratic dance about her mother's black eyed Susans and Russian sage. For the first time she noticed the pink and lavender butterfly tattoo on the left wrist of a co-worker at the local lakeside café. Then there was the green and red fat-winged butterfly face painted onto the right cheek of a cousin during a powwow. Even the butterfly pattern in her friend's pants sneered at her from white and purple stitching, a detail she hadn't noticed until Christie had invited her to spar that day.

They said life often presented many patterns, patterns that people claimed brought "meaning" and "inspiration" to their mundane lives – like seeing butterflies after a lover pledged their devotion with similar insect-like themes. It could seem ridiculous, but she figured it all depended on how much pain you were in, on how much you needed something to hold onto. Sometimes we were too blind or too preoccupied to notice patterns, but she'd always been acute to such things—when she wasn't knee deep in work, that is. Then there were the others who said that these things were meaningless, and that people just saw what they wanted to see. She didn't know which it was; regardless, she kept seeing those damn winged insects. She felt like she should be back in her high school English class analyzing literature, listing off symbols, motifs, metaphors and the three types of irony. Things like this only ever happened in books after all, and her life was far from great literature. This was no Harper Lee nor Amy Tan, no Sherman Alexie nor J.D. Salinger. This was just Julia Chang and her failed attempts at love and profundity, with her mind and everything ordinary in between. The butterflies probably meant nothing, just exaggerated symbols from the depths of a desperate imagination.

But was it not from the deceivingly ordinariness of stories from which the greatest literature was born? Were not many of life's most profound lessons and themes found within the ordinary lives of extraordinary characters: Scout and Atticus Finch; Jingmei Woo and Waverly Jong; Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor Polatkin; Holden Caulfield? Just extraordinary characters making the best out of the lives that they were given; characters with experiences that touched hearts and seared souls, resonating through time, seeping through the words to touch the lives of the readers who would one day devour those stories in hopes too of finding some meaning, some reflection of themselves, within its pages.

Couldn't she too have such meaning, have something more? Couldn't the butterflies be telling her something?

"I wish you would just talk to me instead of sending me these songs," she'd told him some time later, after sickening from all the butterflies.

"Did you listen to the song?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"You know I love you."

"I know."

It worried her that he said those three words more often than she did.

It was because they were the most dangerous words in the world – when you actually meant them, that is. She didn't take those words lightly, because saying them created truth. Saying them meant never turning back. It meant being wounded forever.

* * *

She was surprised that the airline had allowed him to retain his fiery hair. It was slightly gelled, however, tamed and professional rather than wild and windswept as he usually wore it. Seeing him reminded her of everything they had been through, and she was unable to speak for a long moment. It was like seeing a ghost. It had been five years after all, five long years in which she'd wondered everyday if he still thought of her as much as she thought of him. After she'd learned that he made a living travelling the world, she'd thought that she would never see him again. Unlike her, whose roots thrived deeply in soil her mother had toiled and nurtured for years, the man she loved had had no such foundation. Standing there before her in his pretentious new wardrobe, he had but a vague image of "home." It was a concept he was still trying to define.

Perhaps that was why he was in the travel industry. He'd always been a vagabond, a wild child, beautiful in his freedom and lack of boundaries. Later, she realized that this was partly not by choice. In reality, he desired stability just like everyone else, normalcy, consistency, a family to nurture and protect, a place to call home, a woman to love and love him in return. Nobody would have guessed this about him.

He'd never told her this plainly and up front, but she understood that sometimes men needed space to think and figure out their worth, figure out what it actually meant to "be a man." So, she learned to keep her distance. It was only when the silences became too loud, when the puzzle pieces didn't fit, that she began to force answers from him.

"I'm like the wind," he often boasted. "I can't stay in one place for too long."

But really, it was because wind was a companion forced upon him at a young age when all earthen roots had been torn out and left to shrivel in the sun. Wind was his lover, mother, father, friend and foe.

Once, when they were fearless, fidgety teenagers thirsting for possibility, she'd asked him about his dream job. Architect or globe trekker, he'd told her shyly, afraid that she would laugh at him. Globe trekker seemed ridiculous after all and architect boring. But she didn't laugh, merely thought hard about his selections and encouraged him to pursue either or.

Deep in her heart though, she feared that if he did one day realize his dream of trekking the world, he would leave her forever and never return. It was selfish, and she was ashamed that such a thought had entered her mind. So, she swallowed her worries and discussed with him the logistics of realizing such a dream.

Because Julia truly believed that setting someone free was the ultimate act of love. After all, she valued her freedom above all else, and how dare she try and keep that from someone. Love meant allowing that person to pursue their heart's desires—even if it didn't involve you in their vision. Even if it took them miles, continents, worlds, away from you.

Now, as she thought about him, she realized that the two careers he had selected had a similar pattern: home. Architects built homes. Globe trekkers made the world their home—or, perhaps, they searched for one that pleased their eyes and called to their souls.

And here he was, finally realizing his wandering aspirations. He'd shifted from asphalt and skyscraper, from mountain air and growl of motorcycle, to the limitless skyscapes of cloud and sunshine, to cardboard airplane food and to any place he wanted to be within hours. Julia didn't know whether to congratulate him or to weep.

He was free now, but it also meant that he would never be hers.

Here they were, five years later, both of them on a plane to Italy. Fate was a tricky game. Why now, why here?

"Hey," he whispered, an utterance so faint it seemed he had not said a word.

He was beautiful. That was all. It was the only explanation she could think of.

She found her voice stuck in her throat, fluttering and straining against her vocal chords like a trapped butterfly, the gossamer wings coating her tongue and mouth with soft powder.

"Hey," she finally managed, blinking back tears that she hoped he didn't notice. She felt claustrophobic, but not from the plane's limited space.

"Can I uh…can I get you something?" he asked in that same soft voice. She wasn't used to hearing him speak in such a way, but she wasn't surprised either, knowing the hardships and changes they had both undergone.

She wanted to cup his face between her hands so that she could kiss him deeply, inhale the smell of him until she was dizzy, run her fingers through his gelled hair and make it wild like the way she loved it. She wanted to still the throbbing, insistent ache in her chest, to fill that emptiness, that hollow loneliness that gnawed at her day by day. She wanted to throw her arms about his neck and press him close to her, as if that embrace would somehow heal and eradicate all pain and mistakes past.

Instead, she smiled, warm but neutral, as if trying to comfort a timid interviewee. Professionalism was key if she was to maintain composure. Everything was all right. It had to be.

Maybe that's why she often intimidated him and others. Her ability to detach herself, to immediately flip a switch in her demeanor and become the complete opposite of what she truly felt, was unparalleled. It made her seem cold, yet completely and utterly put-together. That's why many likened her to earthen qualities: strong, stable, enduring. When she wanted to, she embodied these traits.

But most of the times, she was flailing inside, drowning in her own water, fluttering erratically like the monarchs in her mother's garden, the emotions waging wars she knew she could never win if she didn't learn to pretend, to detach, to harden, to blindfold the onlooker and fool them into keeping a respectful distance. Her emotions were her lifeblood as well as her downfall.

"I'll take a ginger ale," she replied.

"It's good to see you," he said, pouring her drink. "I'll be in back in about a half hour. Come talk to me."

"All right."

* * *

_You're pretty badass. You could take someone out with those muscled legs, if the glare doesn't get them first._

These were common compliments she received from many high school and college peers who didn't know her well. In reality, Julia's compassion for others, her love for the environment, her deep spirituality and her willingness to listen to anyone, anywhere, any time, was unmatched. It was because of this hypersensitivity, this "frailty," that she cultivated that "tough girl."

But there was one who knew her well, one she could not fool.

Miharu Hirano, a soft-spoken but hard working girl, had been Julia's friend for more than eight years.

That day, once again, Miharu was bailing Julia out of trouble. They were twenty years old.

Julia had decided to take the bus and visit a friend who lived several states away. It had been one of the more impulsive decisions she'd ever made, to travel alone, to sleep in a boy's house for two days—because God knew the possibilities when that happened—and worse, she hadn't told anyone about it. She'd felt bad that she'd kept Michelle in the dark, but if she let her mother know that she was going to visit a _boy_, more than hell would break loose. Their relationship was completely platonic, but mothers didn't really buy that now did they.

Three days later she'd returned, exhausted but unscathed and yes, still virginal, as well as triumphant that she'd pulled off one of the biggest deceptions of her life. She felt like she'd passed some test. Guilt gnawed at her belly from time to time, but she still felt like she had conquered some part of herself.

So when she was stranded at the bus station after the sixteen-hour ride home, it was Miharu she called, her best, most practical, reliable friend. Miharu, her complete opposite and the keeper of her secrets.

But instead of asking, pleasantly and innocently, as was her style, how Julia's trip had gone, Miharu broke out into gentle lecture.

"Jules, why didn't you tell anyone where you were? I didn't think you were that stupid," Miharu began, her eyes never leaving the road.

"I dunno," Julia replied, her tongue and eyes thick with lethargy. She wasn't in the mood for an interrogation.

"Well, you should have at least told _me_. What if something had happened to you? You know, when you called me, I thought you were tied up somewhere being raped by this guy."

Julia laughed, thinking of her guy friend. No way, not even possible.

"I'm serious," Miharu insisted, pulling into an empty parking lot. "I'm sorry to lecture you like this and maybe it's not my place…but I was worried about you."

Finally, Julia met her friend's eyes, recognizing the genuine concern there. Though Julia was capable of caring deeply for complete strangers, for everyone for that matter, she often neglected those who felt the same way about her.

"I'm…I'm sorry," the Native woman conceded, her chest aching. Rather than resist her friend's lecture, Julia found herself welcoming the concern. It was comforting to know someone cared.

"You know, you try to come off as all tough, but I know you, Julia," her friend continued. "We think nothing can happen to us, because we're still young. But we're all vulnerable, okay? Even you."

A part of her realized then that this façade had made her blind. What Miharu said made sense, and her friend's concern touched her deeply.

What she didn't have the courage to tell Miharu was that she already knew that the "toughness" was a façade, that she was all too aware of her own vulnerability. She couldn't tell Miharu that she'd been afraid during the entire journey to her friend's house, that it was only this "toughness" that kept her emotions from ruling her and making her stay home and remain the cautious, boring bookworm that she was. The façade commanded the respect from those around her when she often felt like crumbling. She wanted to prove, more to herself than to others, that she could control such influxes of emotions.

That secret journey was, guiltily, more for her benefit rather than for her guy friend's. The emotions—the loneliness and the longing and the deep love she still harbored despite the pain, the wondering, and the unanswered questions—had taken their toll. Hoping that the trip would enable her to escape from everything for a while, she'd left on impulse, not realizing until she'd reached her destination that nothing had changed.

"All right," Julia replied. "I won't do that again."

"I don't believe that," Miharu said, smiling for the first time since she'd picked up her friend from the bus station.

"What?"

"You were always the more rebellious one between us two, and I'm pretty sure you'll do something like this again. But if you feel like you can't tell anyone, just don't do it. 'Cause maybe it's not the right thing to do."

The Native woman was quiet again as Miharu pulled into the parking lot outside Julia's apartment.

"But if you must do it, then tell _me_ at least. I won't tell anyone, but at least one person will know where you are."

"Okay."

Perhaps it was foolish to revel in one's loneliness and to twist it into strength when, inside, everything was falling apart. It was foolish to think you were alone and then neglect the ones who still mattered; the constants who would always be there to love you and take you back home when you were stranded.

It was comforting to take a journey and to be able to have a home to return to.

Julia wished that she could give Hwoarang these things.

But, they weren't so different in that they were both searching for something they had not yet found. They were both wanderers in their own ways. Every moment was a little journey in itself, a journey in which one never knew what would happen next.

She hoped that one day they would find what they were searching for.


	3. The Catalyst

**A year and one day later I update this. This really shouldn't be here at all. I didn't edit it much. It literally just gushed out, and that's rare. Blah, blah, blah. ~Sage**

* * *

_The heart is the only broken instrument that works._

- T.E. Kalem

* * *

**3: The Catalyst**

She was seventeen, and no, it wasn't a very good year. Along with worrying about college applications, scholarships essays, and planning out the next four years of her academic life, she'd made the mistake of telling her mother about Hwoarang. Michelle's approval had always been of utmost importance, so she figured honesty was better now than years later. Though she sometimes fantasized about kissing boys with chlorine mouths, or about sharing secrets and sips of illicit drinks with the rich blondes who ruled her neighborhood, she wasn't that type of girl. So she told Michelle about the late night phone calls and about the long hours of laughter, about singing past midnight while cooped up in the car.

"You obviously like this boy a lot," her mother said after a long pause.

"He's sweet," Julia replied, folding and unfolding her hands in her lap.

Michelle wasn't convinced. Something about this conversation had her instincts on alert.

"Who are his parents?"

"His parents? Uh, well, h-his mom left him when he was eight, and his father's, well…his dad's…"

"Yes?"

"His dad's in prison."

Michelle smirked, a warning sign to the teenager sitting across from her. Julia knew it was over.

"So you're telling me that you're talking to a boy related to criminals. Now what would that mean about his values, hm? About his upbringing?"

"Mom, it's not his fault."

But, without compassion, Michelle continued to drill her daughter with what should have been easy questions to answer. Does he plan to go to college? What were his favorite foods, his favorite color, his hobbies, his aspirations and dreams? Did he have a job? She didn't know. She figured it was because she'd never bothered to ask him. But the growing unease in her stomach betrayed her calm composure. He should have told her these things, right? Who _was_ he? It had been six months already.

"Why do you like him? Tell me e_xactly_ why."

"It's just—I dunno, just a feeling that I have when I talk to him."

"A 'feeling?'"

"Well, I—"

"What did his parents do for a living?"

"I-I don't know. I never asked."

Michelle leaned towards her daughter, the anger in her eyes replaced with disturbed concern.

"It worries me that you know nothing about this boy, aside from the fact that he knows how to make you giddy with hormones."

"Mom, I'm more mature than that!"

"No, I know that look in your eyes. This thing will get out of control if I don't nip it at the bud. You better end it with him. Now."

Julia began to hate her mother then, if only briefly, for always being right. As much as she liked Hwoarang, she couldn't deny all the holes in their relationship. At seventeen, she was easily seduced by intriguing, tragic stories, and Hwoarang had tales that could put Scheherazade to shame. As the words flowed from his mouth she had felt only compassion. She never once thought to question his honesty.

"You need someone with good, solid _roots_, Julia. But his life is in pieces," Michelle said. "A rootless man will hurt you. It might not happen right away, but it will eventually."

"How would _you_ know?" Julia retorted.

Her mother traced the rim of her coffee mug with a long finger, her eyes clouding.

"Because I married one. I love him, but your father is a dark, secretive man. And he never wants to talk about himself. He bottles it up until it hurts."

Julia remembered those moments in childhood when she would sit beside her father and wonder what was going on in his mind. Whenever she asked him about himself, he might tell her a story about his boyhood, something simple and shallow to make her believe he was opening up, that she was getting to know him. But her father was merely layering intricate half-truths to keep her from asking more questions.

"But you know what?" Michelle continued. "I thought he was sad and sweet. I thought I could make him happy, make him open up."

Her mother looked away, the hardness in her expression fading momentarily as a faraway look overtook her eyes.

"That's the stupid thing about women. Too many of us are willing to take on bad men. We are willing to compromise ourselves, our values, because we think we can _change_ these men.

"But people don't change, Julia," her mother murmured. "This boy is shady, and I don't trust him."

She should have listened to her mother from the beginning. But rivers of rebellion had always flowed within her, calm as they could be, what with her good grades and goody-two-shoes disposition. Soon, she stored away Michelle's lectures into the deep pools of her mind, deciding that she and Hwoarang were simply misunderstood—that love could solve anything, rootless or not.

* * *

She was almost eighteen.

"I need you to tell me if I'm worthy. If I can…do this."

"What do you mean?"

"I've never had parents to guide me, Jules. I've been fending for myself since I was little. It's just—I feel lost a lot. I don't know who I am."

She almost wanted to roll her eyes. People were always trying to find themselves these days, and she thought Hwoarang was better than that. He always seemed to know what he was doing after all, offering perverse wit and cocksure philosophy when things got bad. So what was with this sudden identity crisis, this out of the blue heart-to-heart conversation during the Christmas holidays?

But she opted for reassurance—even if she had no idea what he was trying to tell her.

"Of course you're worthy, Hwoarang. Everybody is worthy. You're a great person."

"Yeah. I guess, huh?"

But his smile wasn't convincing. She hadn't given him the answer he was looking for.

"I'm not good at losing people, Julia."

Where was this coming from?

"I mean, I'm really, really bad at it. I can't handle it. My parents left me. I had few friends in school. I've never had a constant in my life."

Rootless. Like the wind. Trapped within secrets.

"I want you to be my constant. Can you be that for me?"

"Of course. I'll always be here for you."

She thought it was silly of him to ask her to be this "constant." Of course she was that. Why was it so important?

How unbearably naïve she used to be. Looking back, Julia knew Hwoarang had known. Perhaps he'd been drawn to that naïveté, to that quiet, enthusiastic innocence he thought could give him a second chance.

But she would not be his constant. That innocence and enthusiasm would dilute into pained realism and fantastic dark daydream, into a focused ambition that drove all things potentially hurtful away—especially love. She was his catalyst. She'd changed his world upon entering it, and she took it away when she decided to leave him for good that April afternoon, two years later. Julia realized after some time that she tended to be the catalyst in every relationship she entered. Even as she saw in grayscale, she often operated in white and black by acting as simultaneous creator and destroyer.

She'd lied to Hwoarang and she hadn't even realized it until he'd wounded her beyond her imagination; she could forgive him, but she could never be there for him. Hwoarang too had changed everything.

Now, five years since their last conversation, his hair remained the same color. She imagined him throwing a fit when the travel agency tried to make him dye it back to black. As solemn as Hwoarang could be, he was nasty, foul-mouthed, and elegantly violent when provoked or, during younger years, when bored.

Exactly thirty minutes later—the methodical, details-oriented journalist in her refused to allow her to arrive any earlier or later than thirty minutes—Julia found herself in the back of the plane with the redhead, who had a ketchup stain down the front of his shirt, no doubt a result of the small bout of turbulence during the hamburger and cookie lunch.

"Hey," she gasped, clutching at the wall to keep her balance. The lurch of butterflies in her stomach, not the plane, had given her minor vertigo.

"Hey," he replied. He frowned at the red stain on his shirt.

She asked him how life was going, and it was a genuine inquiry. Julia would ask very few perfunctory questions, though they would be layered thick with what seemed like trivialities and pretense. Composure, composure. Lose it and you'll nosedive like this plane into the ocean if it hits more wild winds.

"It's all right. Could be better," he nodded. They both had their arms folded over their chests.

"Yeah. Mine too."

"So what you been up to?"

She couldn't tell if he was genuinely interested or if it was just one of those awkward-silence-filler questions. This was her problem: the thought too much. She overanalyzed every single detail until she became manic with them. Perhaps it was an obsession with understanding everything, or maybe it was because she was just that insecure. She hated feeling insecure.

"I'm an international reporter at The Wind Herald," she finally uttered. "I bounce between the crime and culture beats. I'm actually on assignment right now."

"That sounds great," he beamed, genuine this time. "I'm proud of you."

"What about you? You've finally become a globe trekker, eh? How is it?"

He didn't look as excited as she thought he would; then again she'd expected the darkness between his smiles just as she knew he would respond with rehearsed words. Traveling wasn't as romantic as the movies and books wrung them out to be. Changing your setting didn't mean you were changing who you were—are. You were just doing another job, serving another person.

"I'm a flight attendant sometimes, but I'm a temp, so they have me doing these odd jobs here and there to, like, prove myself," he uttered.

"Oh? Like what?"

"Sometimes I'll go places and I'll write about what I see, like food and restaurants and stuff. Mostly I just talk to the bellboys at the hotels I stay at."

He laughed awkwardly, but she kept talking to keep him going.

"You're writing? That's awesome. About where? Where have you been?"

_Where have you been—_physically, mentally, emotionally, for all this time. The words were like blades in her throat, forged and sharpened in Arizona heat and left to rust in his silence.

"Well, there was France—didn't like France—and Germany, Mexico, and now Italy."

He was curt, as usual. It was so like him to make her feel like he was doing okay, that he was opening up, when in fact he was probably as broken as she'd left him and even more lost and angry.

"It's boring really," he continued. "My writing is amateurish, but I refuse to quit. I need to keep this, you know?"

He must have seen the pain in her face.

"I wish I could write like you; you breathe it. I could always feel everything you wrote," he added. This time his honesty hurt.

She remembered, seven years ago, when he'd asked her to write their love story for him. Hwoarang was a terrible writer—she never had the heart to tell him—and after failed attempts at writing their romance, he'd asked her to do it for him, because only Julia could make him feel the story. Emotions were her specialty, and writing was her strength, so Julia giddily accepted the task.

One paragraph in and she stopped, right after she learned that he'd slept with a Korean girl while visiting family in Seoul.

"You used me!" she'd cried. "You wanted me to write our story, because you don't even remember it, because you don't have the balls to think about how much you hurt me and then to put it in fucking writing! What will it be for you, some kind of memorabilia of the good times with the good girl before you screwed her over? _Fuck_ you!"

"I'm not using you," he growled. "That thought has never crossed my mind. Why do you always think I'm this, this _bad _person who's trying to hurt you? I'm not forcing you to do anything!"

"Don't make this like I'm the bad one, okay? You fuckedthis girl, and you waited _this _long to tell me. You're a piece of shit! You're worthless!"

What else was she good for if not for weaving beautiful stories, stories she herself did not know to be true or untrue? But what if it was her story this time?

Later she would know he'd gotten this girl pregnant. But for now, the mere thought of him between another woman's legs was enough for her to want to stick her pencil in his throat. She never wrote their story, not the version he wanted anyway, and she could never write back the trust she once had in him.

Hwoarang could never be straightforward; he could curse, insult, crack jokes and tell her she was beautiful straightforward. But everything else was a cryptic, knotted, thorny circle that he used like a noose or boomerang when he was trying to tell-not tell her something. Writing "their story" for him wasn't the only incident. After he found out he'd impregnated the Korean woman, he started asking Julia if he would make a good father, or what she thought about this or that name if he and Julia were, hypothetically, to have children someday in a crooked little house in that unhappy ending he'd already foreseen but she had not.

Julia remembered this in flashes as Hwoarang continued to compliment her writing. Outside the plane's oval windows, the clouds suffocated the sun and earth below so that all the passengers could see were white wisps and blue, as if floating in a dream.

She decided to remind him of what he had done to her.

"How's Arumee?"

"She's good. She's a little hell raiser." Vague, as usual.

"And your wife?"

"She's doing fine. We're not married yet though. She says she's afraid of marriage," Hwoarang replied. "She wants to wait until she gets her degree."

Julia was starting to hate this nameless woman even more. Why couldn't she be some heroin addict with jagged teeth and saggy breasts?

"So she's smart," the Native woman smiled, and Hwoarang didn't miss the bitterness on her tongue. "What's she going for?"

"She wants to be a sex therapist."

Julia swallowed her laughter with a hard bite to the insides of her cheeks. Oh, the irony. It tasted like the blood pooling in her mouth. Iron fist, iron heart.

"Wow, good for her. I forgot that profession existed."

If that's what they're calling whores nowadays.

"I know, right?" Hwoarang said with a grin, taking the bait. "She thinks everyone should fuck, even old people."

Even eighteen-year-old boys who made promises they couldn't keep and who said they loved another girl, but who went home seeking help and instead explored the meat market for a few nights, then told lies until they'd convinced themselves that they were the victims.

Julia suddenly imagined Hwoarang in bed with his fiancée, both of them naked and drenched in sweat and moaning. She imagined he found the girl achingly arousing, that they always did this after she came home and made him dinner like the goddamn idyllic family she guessed they would be. Right then, she forgot she was worried about his happiness and felt like depriving him of something, even as he stood before her with nothing to his name. He was an empty shell who still sought a nice good fuck once in awhile, and that made her angrier than he would ever know. Or maybe he did know and didn't care. But if fucking was the only way he could feel, then maybe she'd been wrong about him all along. He once declared that sex wasn't all that, as if he was different from the rest of the male species, but his actions proved otherwise.

"You know, it's good to be talking to you again," Hwoarang said. "I was kicking myself for what I did to you, but then, you know, life's too short, you know?"

Yes. It is. It was his way of telling her he'd moved on. He didn't care.

"So do you have someone? Should I be jealous?"

She felt like punching him in the mouth.

"Why in the world, Hwoarang, would you ever be jealous?" she hissed, her demeanor darkening. "You have a family now. It shouldn't matter."

Hwoarang looked away, smirked that smirk she knew too well. "Julia, I'll always be jealous of the man who calls himself yours. Even after all of the shit that happened between us, I still care about you. I still think about you every day and wonder if you're okay."

She wanted to, but could not believe him.

"Why? It seems as if you have a pretty amazing family though."

"I do," he relented. "But you're amazing too, _jagiya_."

"Call me Julia."

Asshole.

"Sorry. Julia."

He only apologized for addressing her inappropriately. He had yet to apologize for all that he had done. Julia felt like reminding him, felt like prodding him to an "I am sorry for being a liar and leading you on," but then that wouldn't be real, and he'd only be doing it because she'd asked, not because he meant it. So she hardened, half-smiled with her mouth closed, and returned to her seat.

She was glad when Steve woke up with a morning's breath yawn and yammered away as if he'd never fallen asleep. For a little while his voice distracted her from thinking too much.

Julia didn't want Hwoarang anymore, that much she knew. He was too screwed up for her to ever want to deal with him again. All she wanted was that apology, but she knew, deep in her heart, that it would never come.


	4. Journey

_So you're gone and I'm haunted  
And I bet you are just fine  
Did I make it that easy to walk  
Right in and out of my life?  
_

- "Almost Lover" by A Fine Frenzy

* * *

**4: Journey**

Rewind to twenty, to the time Hwoarang finally told her everything.

Rewind to the time before Miharu's lecture, to before logic could hold her down, to the moment she sat in that white and blue Greyhound station waiting for something she hoped would take her far away.

Raven said he had a guest bedroom he never used, and that she should come over during spring break. He said they could do whatever she wanted to. Her birthday had passed a few days prior, and he had a car, a cake, and a television with old video games. There was the nearby mall, a Barnes & Noble, Thai food—the works. Of course she wanted to. The timing was perfect.

So she lied to Michelle and to her roommates and disappeared on that rainy morning with a small suitcase and her bus tickets. She drifted off to sleep against the Greyhound window as the yellow and green flatlands raced by beyond the glass. She bought herself greasy breakfast food at the trucker rest stops at three in the morning, and curled her arms around her knees to keep warm when night swallowed the road and the bus became cold and black. She sipped chai tea and wondered about the stories and the destinations of the people who shared the bus with her. She even wondered if the driver liked his job. How lonely it must be. How dreadfully long and dull. What stories did they tell themselves for motivation, as the day drew into night and as their eyelids grew heavy? Which songs did they memorize to keep their spirits bright, which lovers or friends did they most dwell upon, as they meandered these endless stretches of concrete?

Did you shape yourself on the road, or did the road shape you?

Julia would realize weeks after the journey that seeing Raven had had little to do with anything. She'd read Kerouac, Steinbeck and Hemingway, wanderers who knew they couldn't get away.

And yet she still tried, just like they did.

It would take a day and a half to get from Phoenix to Denver, to Raven's modest suburban rambler and to his quiet friendship. It hadn't been strange for Julia when the ex-CIA agent confessed his love for her a year ago. He didn't expect anything from her, but had only wanted to tell her so he could stop living lies like he did at the Agency. Raven accepted that Julia's heart belonged to Hwoarang—that red-haired bastard didn't deserve an _ounce_ of her affections—but he knew too that she was broken. He couldn't fix that, but maybe he could distract her.

So, he invited her to his home and drove her around town to keep her happy, all the while imagining how her lips would feel pressed against his and wondering if her smile ever reached her eyes.

"You put sugar in your spaghetti? I've never heard of that before."

"It's my mom's recipe. Nice, isn't it?" he said.

"It is, surprisingly," she said with a nod, helping herself to another forkful.

Afterwards, Raven produced a chocolate cake from the fridge, and she felt bad that she couldn't take it home with her later.

"I'm lucky to have you as my friend."

* * *

That night she woke up coughing. Her throat itched, and she felt cold. Why now, in the middle of spring? Spirits must be laughing, she thought to herself. Never get her sick until she does something she's not supposed to. Still, as an ardent believer in karma, she made a mental note never to do something like this again. In the meantime, she tended to her throat with a cough drop and a book.

It was a young adult novel Michelle had given Julia when she turned eleven. She had a hard time getting through the first few chapters as a child—perhaps because having yet another European heroine saving brown peoples' lives had little appeal—but now, nine years later, she decided picking up lost things to become lost in wasn't such a bad idea.

But the sentences weren't making sense this time, the characters uninteresting and blending into one, so Julia put down the novel and continued to cough.

_Why am I here? What if something happens to me?_

_ Something already did. Remember? _

She looked about the room, at the sharp shadows dividing the carpet into halves of light and dark. She looked at the television and at the game consoles she and Raven had used earlier to battle in cyber space, at the chest of drawers strewn with her beaded earrings and silver rings. Her suitcase was open in the corner, shampoo and lotion thrown onto a desk, socks balled up and thrown haphazardly to the side with her boots.

Off kilter. Scattered. Chaotic.

* * *

The next morning Raven gave her orange chamomile tea and Tylenol. He was saying something about how he should have turned up the heat last night and that he was sorry for not doing so. Only half listening, Julia sipped the tea and felt her throat open.

"I forgave him," she said.

It took a moment for him to understand. But when he did Raven sat down and leaned back against the couch with his arms loose at his sides. It was as if he was finally submitting-finally realizing that she was sick, would always be sick, and would never be his.

"I figured you would."

"I think I'll always love him. I don't want to. He hurt me."

"I know."

She felt the tea warm her hands, and she inhaled its scent into her lungs. But the only thing the liquid calmed was her throat. All the better to speak the truth.

"I think I always knew something was wrong. I just—I didn't want to believe it."

Raven looked at her with his signature stoicism, his eyelids half closed. Sometimes she wished he wasn't so collected and eerily sensitive to her emotions. Sometimes she wanted to be shaken to her senses, to be told loudly, violently, to get a damn grip.

Instead, her friend calmly replied, "He never deserved you."

She smirked, shuffling to the front porch window to gaze outside at the empty neighborhood.

"He said that to me a lot. Said he didn't 'deserve' me. Said he was 'unworthy.' What a coward."

"So he apologized?"

Julia smiled, pursed her lips. "No."

She knew Raven was probably thinking about how ridiculous she sounded. He couldn't understand how she could still love a liar, how she could forgive the unforgiveable. Julia didn't understand it either.

But the beautiful thing about Raven was that compassion always won. He listened first. Sometimes, he never spoke at all, and Julia was thankful for that.

"You know, what I said to you, about my feelings for you," he began, his eyes meeting hers. "Those feelings haven't changed."

"I know."

"I'll be here for you."

"He said that to me, too."

"But I'm not him, Julia. I'm not Hwoarang."

"No. You're not."

* * *

_ I'd never lie to you._

_ I love you more than you'll ever know. _

_ I'll always be there for you._

Hwoarang said a lot of things…

_You know that Korean girl I told you about? Let's say I got her pregnant…and I have a daughter. Her name is Arumee. She's two. _

_She won't let me have custody until I get back on my feet._

_This is a picture of the baby, her grandmother, and me. _

…but only some of them mattered.

_I don't care if you don't believe me. I don't care anymore._

* * *

The cough worsened. Angry, yearning tears soaked her pillow that night. She dreamt that Hwoarang was there in the bed, holding her, but she could neither touch nor see him. It was only his voice in her ear, his hands about her waist, even his smell. In the morning she was feverish, numb, dizzy.

How could she think that in running away to Raven, she would somehow find Hwoarang? That he would miraculously appear like some cruel apparition so that she could tell him how broken she was? How did it make sense that she wanted to find him and run from him at the same time?

_Dear my love, haven't you wanted to be with me? _

Every memory, every emotion, every letter and word and song, was magnified into this dull ache in her heart, into this sickness that made her feel cold to the soul. Running away from the truth had merely brought her closer to it.

_And dear my love, haven't you longed to be free?_

"Hello?"

"Hey, Miharu? Can you…can you pick me up at the Greyhound station tomorrow?"

"Julia, where are you? Are you okay?"

_So by the morning's light, we'll be half way to anywhere…_

"Can you just come get me? Please?"

_Where love is more than just your name._

* * *

Raven called her later that evening to make sure she got home all right. Julia was irritated with the phone call. Don't worry about me, she thought. Don't miss me or love me or care about me, because I don't have that in me for anyone anymore. I'm not some damsel I don't need your support I fucking used you as an escape and it didn't fucking work so fuck off.

Heartless little ingrate. She didn't care.

Julia swallowed some Delsym, curled up on the couch with two blankets and tried to ignore the coughing and the marrow-deep exhaustion. Everything felt like a bad dream. She knew she was being foolish and reckless, maybe even a little dramatic, but all she could think about was how she hadn't seen that betrayal coming.

Julia wanted to kill him. She wanted to feel his bleeding flesh beneath her fists. She wanted to insinuate her way into his family someday so she could meet Arumee and warp the bastard child's mind by telling her about her scum father. She wanted to pretend to befriend Hwoarang's new woman, just so she could find her weaknesses and tear her apart from within. It was a small world; these things were possible. So Julia plotted and schemed and thought of all kinds of dark things to do and say, as the tears slicked her cheeks and reddened her eyes.

But in the end, despite her vengeful fantasies, she couldn't bring herself to hate Hwoarang. She wished she could. Hatred would justify this chaos. As of now, she was nothing but a powerless mess buried in blankets of misery.

Julia closed her eyes and tried to sleep. The Delsym wasn't doing its job. The fever and the coughing kept her awake long into the night.

She couldn't admit to herself that she had broken, finally. That she was lost. That a part of her had changed forever.


	5. Compassion

_Someone I loved once gave me_  
_a box full of darkness._

_It took me years to understand_  
_that this, too, was a gift._

- Mary Oliver, "The Uses of Sorrow"

* * *

**5: Compassion**

'_Are you happy?'_

Only Hwoarang could condense nearly three years of memories into three little words.

Perhaps he thought anonymity protected him. _Say it to my goddamn face, you coward. _

Maybe she could have said yes and allowed him a clearer conscience.

But to say yes would be a lie, and to say no would imply her wellness depended on him.

_'My happiness is no longer your concern.'_

Whether he received the message wasn't important. What she relished was that he was watching. _Do you know that I wish for your despair?_

More often, though, she was ashamed. She would be more cautious next time. She would make a craft out of self-preservation.

_'Sometimes I dream of sitting in a bar where everybody knows my name. I just wanna be old and sit back and have lots of grandchildren.'_

He would fly through time, then, forsake the memories of youth, memories of _her,_ for the respect and ease of old age. Maybe it was poetic, maybe it was what he deserved given all that he'd been through—but all Julia saw was ugly surrender.

Where was the wanderer, the dreamer, the rebel?

How could he not know that he didn't have to dream of the future when she could make him realize a glorious present?

_'But you did help me. You helped me the most, Julia. You taught me that I deserve better than all that's happened. That there's more to it all.'_

It wasn't the lesson she'd been trying to teach.

_'I forgive you.'_

She hadn't known how else to let go.

* * *

It was three in the morning and she couldn't sleep (not that she received much anyway at these hours. Inspiration fancied the graveyard shift, when minds closed and hearts un-caged). Milan could be a nap away, but instead the journalist gazed out her window to the night beyond. Hovering between falling stars and solid ground; where was it safer to land when she let go?

Her photographer scribbled away in a notepad as he flipped through the files in Julia's folder. Perhaps he felt guilty for falling asleep on her earlier and was making up for lost time.

"You'll love Italy, trust me," he said during a pause in his writing. "I've never been to Milan, but if you could see Rome, Venice, Urbino…"

She smiled and nodded but couldn't bring herself to give a damn about Europe or about whatever the Mishima Zaibatsu was doing _this_ time. Right now, she wanted to write about being trapped in the sky, in the dark, with "love." But stories like that didn't make the front page and even if they did, even if Gregorio somehow became uncharacteristically impulsive and slapped her "love" onto A1 Julia wouldn't allow it. She was a proud woman, prouder over the years because of fast-acquired wisdom, uncompromising standards and honest prose, and she wouldn't jeopardize respect and steely equipoise for a story about, well, _fluff_. Besides, it wasn't news if it wasn't novel, and hell, everyone had a story about heartbreak.

Then again was it fluff if it could bring people to their knees?

What felled a person and made them cry out, _oh God? _What made them read on and say, I know how you feel; you are not alone? Was that not still power?

And wasn't it Hwoarang who made her wiser, in romance, in self-love?

_You fool, _she immediately scoffed, obliterating the idea. _Don't credit him with such a thing._ He was merely a test of evolution. Some women turned to ashes when they touched men on fire, but instead of burning Julia had reverted to water, to a deeper spot in her mind that drowned fatal flames.

So she'd write about it when she went home, then, in the privacy of her own darkness and under scrutiny of nothing but her thoughts and the white glow of a desk lamp. She'd lay it all out and show it to a friend or a stranger and let _them_ tell her how stupid she was. And then it would be done, done done done, and she could go back years later and read it over and laugh at the mistakes incurred, at the childish reveries and faux heartaches. No one fell in love at seventeen, right? It was only another lesson to learn, fate at work to make sure you developed into a Heaven-worthy human being.

To her relief Steve, ever convivial, had struck up a conversation about soccer—_football_—with a fellow insomniac sitting in front of him. She should use this time to focus on Milan and on the different angles the story could take—of which there were very few; as volatile as Kazama and his family were they were astonishingly predictable—before Hwoarang turned up again and offered her dinner (ricotta pasta, boiled vegetables and an oatmeal cookie, how original). She was tired of thinking about him and yet all she wanted right now was to do exactly that: to purge him thoroughly through thorough thought. Through brutal, brooding prose.

"You ever tried your hand at cricket, Julia?" Steve again.

"I'm afraid the only cricket Americans know of are the insects," she replied with a smile. "We prefer a real sport, you know, _baseball."_

Her photographer rolled his eyes in mock irritation, then turned again to his newly made friend.

If only worlds collided so simply.

* * *

"I want you to be _un_comfortable."

Her News Writing professor was doling out final feature assignments. There were ten students, twelve if you counted the two who were always late. The small class size allowed the teacher to personalize each project, not to mention she could destroy writing faster with her poisonous red ink. Julia appreciated honesty, though; brutal meant better and she respected those scarlet slashes on white. Eventually it would only be white – but that wasn't for a long time yet.

As a journalist you could find yourself "in all sorts of diverse situations," so her professor wanted them to find a topic they felt negatively biased about. Learn it, report it and turn it in.

She was nineteen and considered herself as open-minded as one could get, until she revealed how she thought homeless people were merely "uneducated men in tattered clothes" who "smelled bad." It was embarrassing, now that she thought about it, even more so when she saw her prejudice in ink.

Ink was permanence, even if you crumpled the paper away or crossed it out with red lines. Ink lived in the mind, not the pen.

"…Kathryn, go to that liberal bookstore and talk to the owner. Ty, I want you to go to that gay bar and interview a drag queen. Don't give me that look. This is exactly why you have to do it…Julia, go to a homeless shelter and talk to the people living there…"

As fate would have it, Julia's roommate volunteered at a shelter for homeless families, so she tagged along one wintry Saturday, notebook and pen in hand, and followed her friend to a lonely gray building in the heart of the city. It wasn't much to the eyes, another plain portal to Narnia if her mind was feeling creative.

The manager's name was Bob and he was tall, old and white-haired. They sat down and talked about homelessness in the city, in the country, and he smiled and gave her pamphlets (Julia's roommate would later tell her how lucky she was; Bob was rarely in the office). And as she asked her list of questions he told her the most important thing to have for these people, for all people, was compassion. Compassion was key to change. It was a warm, loving spiel, but one she could still distance herself from.

It was only when she finally interviewed the "clients" that her heart began to break. They weren't old men in tattered clothes who smelled bad; they were entire families. Teenagers. Children. Babies. Men without light in their eyes. Women with wind-roughed skin and exhausted voices. No homes. No jobs. Just a little bit of hope and a few minutes to answer a naïve college sophomore's questions.

That night, Julia wept in her bed. In all those tired, beaten souls she had seen Hwoarang's face. She knew his secret intuitively.

"I tried to hold on to the house after my parents left, but eventually it foreclosed. I've been at a men's shelter for awhile."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to think I was weak."

His voice was hollow; it frightened her. His honesty revealed his apathy. They'd been fighting. He had still cheated on her. But right now, as he told her the entire truth, all she wanted to do was hold him and tell him it would be all right.

_I'm sorry this had to happen to you. If I could, I'd take it all away. Let me soothe your sorrow. Let me know you, if only for a few seconds. _

But he was already gone.

It was then that she called Raven. Only then did she let someone hear her cry.

Raven too was a casualty of compassion. She had reached out for him, and he'd held her close without ever touching her. And she'd wronged him.

Years later, she would be driving home from the office and sometimes she wondered how Raven was doing. She would want to call him just to hear his voice, his laughter, just to let him know that she still appreciated him, even if she was colder and more distant than she used to be.

Instead, Julia drove those midnight highways alone and allowed the memories to replay quietly in her mind.

She learned to value the pain. Evolution required it.

There were stories writers claimed _had _to be written, for the sake of veracity, for sanity, for the lives of others, and this one was one of them. In that single story about homelessness she'd learned the truth without having to ask. All she had to do was open her eyes.

_Now is the time to write. You are ready to know. To see. To let go. _

If there was such a thing as fate this was the closest to it she'd ever known.

Along the way, she discovered the truth about herself.

Perhaps that had been the purpose all along.

* * *

A hailstorm pummeled Milan, so their plane landed in the Rome Fiumicino Airport instead. After waiting in baggage claim for almost an hour, the carousels making too many empty revolutions Julia and Steve realized their bags were lost.

"_Mi hanno perso i bagagli_," Julia said to the customs clerk slowly, remembering one of the few Italian phrases she'd memorized should a nightmare like this occur.

Lost luggage was common in Italy, apparently, not efficient like back home. Sure, Americans were obese and brutish and unsophisticated, but they were on schedule, damn it, and sometimes that's all it took to be top dog. And as an American journalist who worshipped no god but AP style, measured her world in inches and planned interviews weeks in advance, Julia was in need of some efficiency. She hadn't had any sleep or breakfast and had unwillingly relived heartbreak for sixteen hours on a plane with a deadbeat ex-lover. Yes, she needed some efficiency.

"Can I see your _pass_port, Miss?"

_Of course they speak English._ Julia exhaled a breath of relief and handed the woman Steve's and her papers. The Brit, on the other hand, was already talking to a Brazilian couple in line behind him. He seemed oblivious to the current crisis; Julia tried not to clench her teeth too hard.

The woman at customs examined their passports and baggage stubs and spoke in rapid Italian to her co-workers. She thought a moment, made a couple phones calls, and turned back to Julia.

"Your bags are at carousel six—on the other side of the airport. Just go through those doors and you should find it. They may be in storage now," she said.

"_Grazie._"

"_Prego!"_

"That's a cute little word, isn't it? _Pre_go!" Steve beamed as he chased after Julia. But she wasn't listening anymore.

Two hours ago, back on the plane, Hwoarang hadn't said a word. As they were disembarking he didn't even come to her to say goodbye. He'd merely lingered in the back near the restrooms, those lightning eyes watching her carefully for a few minutes before they shifted back to his work, back to his life and to the woman and daughter he had at home, wherever that was.

How realistic. How sparse. How sparingly, truthfully journalistic.

A part of her was still a romantic, then. A goddamn poet. A part of her had expected a profound gesture, a final act of remorse. But in that stubborn silence the final illusion shattered.

"It's here, isn't it?" Steve called to her.

Julia had walked right past number six. More exchanges followed. Steve handled it this time, with that smile and those hands, at ease, weaving through time and tension as he would in the boxing ring. She admired him for it; still, the occasion called for an authentic cappuccino at a nearby coffeehouse.

"Here we are," the blonde announced with their luggage in tow. "Safe and sound."

"Europeans," she breathed, but with a smile this time. "How the hell do you do it?"

"You just do," her photographer chuckled. "You Americans are always worried about something."

She couldn't disagree with that, so she ordered another cappuccino and handed it to Steve.

"Let's just sit here for awhile," she sighed.

She looked through her cell phone and found Raven's name. It was time she recognized and acknowledged real love when it found her, even when she couldn't feel the same way in return. Maybe she'd call Miharu too, and Michelle.

"Is everything all right?" Steve asked.

Julia sipped her drink, the foam coating her tongue and lips. She listened to the different languages around her, to the bustle of travelers and impetuous dreamers, to the heartbroken philosophes and scrambling businesspeople, to the lonely wanderers of no particular time and place. She listened to that movement. How it changed. Thrived.

"Yes," she smiled. "Everything will be all right."


End file.
